Billy Wilder is the American cinema’s most famous cynic, but nothing in his career is as scathing as his noir-tinged newspaper drama Ace in the Hole (1951), his indictment of the American media circus. There’s not a more amoral hero in Wilder’s filmography than Kirk Douglas’s Chuck Tatum, an arrogant big city newsman stuck in […]
The High and the Mighty was the biggest hit of 1954 and nominated for six Academy Awards (it won for Dmitri Tiomkin’s memorable score). Seen today, this lavish aviation drama falls squarely between Stagecoach and Airport, a large ensemble drama about a mechanical crisis on a Honolulu-to-San Francisco flight where every passenger has a story […]
